France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
of Exploration.--Adventures and Accidents.--The
Buffalo.--Duhaut.--Indian Massacre.--Return Of La Salle.--A New
Calamity.--A Desperate Resolution.--Departure for Canada.--Wreck of
the "Belle."--Marriage.--Sedition.--Adventures Of la Salle's
Party.--The Cenis.--The Camanches.--The Only Hope.--The Last
Farewell.
Of what avail to plant a colony by the mouth of a petty Texan river? The
Mississippi was the life of the enterprise, the condition of its growth
and of its existence. Without it, all was futile and meaningless,--a
folly and a ruin. Cost what it might, the Mississippi must be found.
But the demands of the hour were imperative. The hapless colony, cast
ashore like a wreck on the sands of Matagorda Bay, must gather up its
shattered resources and recruit its exhausted strength, before it
essayed anew its pilgrimage to the "fatal river." La Salle during his
explorations had found a spot which he thought well fitted for a
temporary establishment. It was on the river which he named the La
Vache,[301] now the Lavaca, which enters the head of Matagorda Bay; and
thither he ordered all the women and children, and most of the men, to
remove; while the rest, thirty in number, remained with Joutel at the
fort near the mouth of the bay. Here they spent their time in hunting,
fishing, and squaring the logs of drift-wood which the sea washed up in
abundance, and which La Salle proposed to use in building his new
station on the Lavaca. Thus the time passed till midsummer, when Joutel
received orders to abandon his post, and rejoin the main body of the
colonists. To this end, the little frigate "Belle" was sent down the
bay. She was a gift from the King to La Salle, who had brought her
safely over the bar, and regarded her as a main-stay of his hopes. She
now took on board the stores and some of the men, while Joutel with the
rest followed along shore to the post on the Lavaca. Here he found a
state of things that was far from cheering. Crops had been sown, but the
drought and the cattle had nearly destroyed them. The colonists were
lodged under tents and hovels; and the only solid structure was a small
square enclosure of pickets, in which the gunpowder and the brandy were
stored. The site was good, a rising ground by the river; but there was
no wood within the distance of a league, and no horses or oxen to drag
it. Their work must be done by men. Some felled and squared the timber;
and others dragged it by main force over the matted grass of the
prairie, under the scorching Texan sun. The gun-carriages served to make
the task somewhat easier; yet the strongest men soon gave out under it.
Joutel went down to the first fort, made a raft and brought up the
timber collected there, which proved a most seasonable and useful
supply. Palisades and buildings began to rise. The men labored without
spirit, yet strenuously; for they labored under the eye of La Salle. The
carpenters brought from Rochelle proved worthless; and he himself made
the plans of the work, marked out the tenons and mortises, and directed
the whole.[302]
[Sidenote: MISERY AND DEJECTION.]
Death, meanwhile, made withering havoc among his followers; and under
the sheds and hovels that shielded them from the sun lay a score of
wretches slowly wasting away with the diseases contracted at St.
Domingo. Of the soldiers enlisted for the expedition by La Salle's
agents, many are affirmed to have spent their lives in begging at the
church doors of Rochefort, and were consequently incapable of
discipline. It was impossible to prevent either them or the sailors from
devouring persimmons and other wild fruits to a destructive excess.
Nearly all fell ill; and before the summer had passed, the graveyard had
more than thirty tenants.[303] The bearing of La Salle did not aid to
raise the drooping spirits of his followers. The results of the
enterprise had been far different from his hopes; and, after a season of
flattering promise, he had entered again on those dark and obstructed
paths which seemed his destined way of life. The present was beset with
trouble; the future, thick with storms. The consciousness quickened his
energies; but it made him stern, harsh, and often unjust to those
beneath him.
Joutel was returning to camp one afternoon with the master-carpenter,
when they saw game; and the carpenter went after it. He was never seen
again. Perhaps he was lost on the prairie, perhaps killed by Indians. He
knew little of his trade, but they nevertheless had need of him. Le
Gros, a man of character and intelligence, suffered more and more from
the bite of the snake received in the marsh on Easter Day. The injured
limb was amputated, and he died. La Salle's brother, the priest, lay
ill; and several others among the chief persons of the colony were in
the same condition.
Meanwhile, the work was urged on. A large building was finished,
constructed of timber, roofed with boards and raw hides, and divided
into apartments for lodging and other uses. La Salle gave the new
establishment his favorite name of Fort St. Louis, and the neighboring
bay was also christened after the royal saint.[304] The scene was not
without its charms. Towards the southeast stretched the bay with its
bordering meadows; and on the northeast the Lavaca ran along the base of
green declivities. Around, far and near, rolled a sea of prairie, with
distant forests, dim in the summer haze. At times, it was dotted with
the browsing buffalo, not yet scared from their wonted pastures; and the
grassy swells were spangled with the flowers for which Texas is
renowned, and which now form the gay ornaments of our gardens.
[Sidenote: LA SALLE'S EXPLORATIONS.]
And now, the needful work accomplished, and the colony in some measure
housed and fortified, its indefatigable chief prepared to renew his
quest of the "fatal river," as Joutel repeatedly calls it. Before his
departure he made some preliminary explorations, in the course of which,
according to the report of his brother the priest, he found evidence
that the Spaniards had long before had a transient establishment at a
spot about fifteen leagues from Fort St. Louis.[305]
[Sidenote: LIFE AT THE FORT.]
It was the last day of October when La Salle set out on his great
journey of exploration. His brother Cavelier, who had now recovered,
accompanied him with fifty men; and five cannon-shot from the fort
saluted them as they departed. They were lightly equipped; but some of
them wore corselets made of staves, to ward off arrows. Descending the
Lavaca, they pursued their course eastward on foot along the margin of
the bay, while Joutel remained in command of the fort. It was two
leagues above the mouth of the river; and in it were thirty-four
persons, including three Récollet friars, a number of women and girls
from Paris, and two young orphan daughters of one Talon, a Canadian, who
had lately died. Their live-stock consisted of some hogs and a litter of
eight pigs, which, as Joutel does not forget to inform us, passed their
time in wallowing in the ditch of the palisade; a cock and hen, with a
young family; and a pair of goats, which, in a temporary dearth of fresh
meat, were sacrificed to the needs of the invalid Abbé Cavelier. Joutel
suffered no man to lie idle. The blacksmith, having no anvil, was
supplied with a cannon as a substitute. Lodgings were built for the
women and girls, and separate lodgings for the men. A small chapel was
afterwards added, and the whole was fenced with a palisade. At the four
corners of the house were mounted eight pieces of cannon, which, in the
absence of balls, were loaded with bags of bullets.[306] Between the
palisades and the stream lay a narrow strip of marsh, the haunt of
countless birds; and at a little distance it deepened into pools full of
fish. All the surrounding prairies swarmed with game,--buffalo, deer,
hares, turkeys, ducks, geese, swans, plover, snipe, and grouse. The
river supplied the colonists with turtles, and the bay with oysters. Of
these last, they often found more than they wanted; for when in their
excursions they shoved their log canoes into the water, wading shoeless
through the deep, tenacious mud, the sharp shells would cut their feet
like knives; "and what was worse," says Joutel, "the salt water came
into the gashes, and made them smart atrociously."
He sometimes amused himself with shooting alligators. "I never spared
them when I met them near the house. One day I killed an extremely large
one, which was nearly four feet and a half in girth, and about twenty
feet long." He describes with accuracy that curious native of the
southwestern plains, the "horned frog," which, deceived by its
uninviting appearance, he erroneously supposed to be venomous. "We had
some of our animals bitten by snakes; among the others, a bitch that had
belonged to the deceased Sieur le Gros. She was bitten in the jaw when
she was with me, as I was fishing by the shore of the bay. I gave her a
little theriac [an antidote then in vogue], which cured her, as it did
one of our sows, which came home one day with her head so swelled that
she could hardly hold it up. Thinking it must be some snake that had
bitten her, I gave her a dose of the theriac mixed with meal and water."
The patient began to mend at once. "I killed a good many rattle-snakes
by means of the aforesaid bitch, for when she saw one she would bark
around him, sometimes for a half hour together, till I took my gun and
shot him. I often found them in the bushes, making a noise with their
tails. When I had killed them, our hogs ate them." He devotes many pages
to the plants and animals of the neighborhood, most of which may easily
be recognized from his description.
[Sidenote: THE BUFFALO.]
With the buffalo, which he calls "our daily bread," his experiences were
many and strange. Being, like the rest of the party, a novice in the art
of shooting them, he met with many disappointments. Once, having mounted
to the roof of the large house in the fort, he saw a dark moving object
on a swell of the prairie three miles off; and rightly thinking that it
was a herd of buffalo, he set out with six or seven men to try to kill
some of them. After a while, he discovered two bulls lying in a hollow;
and signing to the rest of his party to keep quiet, he made his
approach, gun in hand. The bulls presently jumped up, and stared
through their manes at the intruder. Joutel fired. It was a close shot;
but the bulls merely shook their shaggy heads, wheeled about, and
galloped heavily away. The same luck attended him the next day. "We saw
plenty of buffalo. I approached several bands of them, and fired again
and again, but could not make one of them fall." He had not yet learned
that a buffalo rarely falls at once, unless hit in the spine. He
continues: "I was not discouraged; and after approaching several more
bands,--which was hard work, because I had to crawl on the ground, so as
not to be seen,--I found myself in a herd of five or six thousand, but,
to my great vexation, I could not bring one of them down. They all ran
off to the right and left. It was near night, and I had killed nothing.
Though I was very tired, I tried again, approached another band, and
fired a number of shots; but not a buffalo would fall. The skin was off
my knees with crawling. At last, as I was going back to rejoin our men,
I saw a buffalo lying on the ground. I went towards it, and saw that it
was dead. I examined it, and found that the bullet had gone in near the
shoulder. Then I found others dead like the first. I beckoned the men to
come on, and we set to work to cut up the meat,--a task which was new to
us all." It would be impossible to write a more true and characteristic
sketch of the experience of a novice in shooting buffalo on foot. A few